There Is No College Basketball Scoring Crisis
"College basketball is facing a crisis. It’s time for an extreme makeover."
-Seth Davis, 3/2/2015
[Bryan Fuller]
After a one-year surge in offense spurred by a sometimes-enforced focus on contact and the virtual elimination of off-ball charges, college basketball largely reverted to its old rules this year. The result: a fractional dip in scoring to new lows and sustained outcry from announcers and newspapermen alike.
Damn things like "division," full speed ahead:
Is college basketball in crisis?
Scoring is down. Pace is at an all-time low. Some teams are winning with defense, which is fine, but far too many others are surviving simply because — let's face it — they miss fewer shots.
Damn things like "bothering to look at even one stat," full speed ahead:
[Colorado head coach Tad] Boyle said several factors, including the way the game is officiated, has led to lower scoring. Teams also tend to do the same things offensively, which makes defending them easier. But for the most part Boyle boiled it down. "Better shooting, quite frankly, would really help," he said.
Seth Davis had a major SI piece decrying the decline:
The more things change, the more they ... get worse. College basketball is slower, more grinding, more physical and more, well, offensive than it has been in a long, long time. The 2014-15 season is shaping up to be the worst offensive season in modern history. Through Feb. 22, teams were averaging 67.1 points per game. That is the lowest average since 1952. The previous low for that span was set just two years ago. This more than reverses the gains that were made last season, after the rules committee made adjustments to clamp down on physical defense and make it harder to draw a charge. Thanks to lax enforcement by officials and a foolish decision to reverse the block/charge modification, scoring declined by 3.79 points per game. That is the steepest single-season drop on record.
As of late, the fretting has spread to the athletic director level, as those ADs look at their attendance figures. All of this looks at the state of the game today and shakes its head sadly at what we've lost.
And it's all nonsense.
College basketball has barely changed
The thing about college basketball is how little it's changed over the past 13 years. Kenpom has data back to 2002 showing an eerily static state of play, with a slight trend towards more efficiency.
Things that actually seem to have a trend are bolded:
| Stat | 2015 | 2010 | 2005 | 2002 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Offensive efficiency | 102.1 | 100.8 | 101 | 100.9 |
| Possessions per game | 64.8 | 67.3 | 67.3 | 69.5 |
| eFG% | 49 | 48.8 | 49.3 | 49.1 |
| TO% | 19.1 | 20.4 | 21.3 | 21.5 |
| OREB% | 31.1 | 32.7 | 33.8 | 34.1 |
| FTA/FGA | 37.1 | 37.7 | 36.5 | 37.6 |
| 3PT% | 34.3 | 34.2 | 34.6 | 34.5 |
| 2PT% | 47.8 | 47.7 | 48 | 47.8 |
| FT% | 69.2 | 68.9 | 68.7 | 69 |
| Block% | 9.6 | 9.2 | 8.8 | 8.5 |
| Steal | 9.4 | 9.8 | 10.4 | 10.3 |
| 3P/FGA | 34.2 | 32.6 | 33 | 32.1 |
| A/FGM | 53.1 | 53.5 | 55.7 | 55.2 |
Shooting has remained shockingly static, as have all the individual components—despite the three point arc moving back slightly during this sample. Offensive efficiency has in fact increased even without the rules changes that a panicked committee instituted two years ago, implemented after a season (2013) in which offensive efficiency was a half-point worse per hundred possessions than it was in 2002.
Only a few things have actually changed: there are fewer turnovers and steals as teams take care of the ball better; there are fewer offensive rebounds as more teams adopt the Wisconsin/Michigan model of preventing transition opportunities at all costs. And there are fewer possessions.
That's it. Games are in fact getting shorter in terms of time spent doing the basketball. Free throw rates remain essentially constant as the denominator shrinks. There are fewer balls flung out of bounds, stopping the clock. Little that happens during the 40 minutes the clock is actually running has changed in 13 years. There are 7% fewer possessions. That is about it.
This holds at all levels. Major conference stats from leagues that had approximately the same membership over the course of these 13 years (ie, not the Big East) show the same broad trends, albeit with the additional jitter inherent in a much smaller sample size. The ACC has plummeted from the country's second-fastest league to #23:
| ACC | 2015 | 2010 | 2005 | 2002 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Offensive efficiency | 104.2 | 100.4 | 104.9 | 106.3 |
| Possessions per game | 63.3 | 67.8 | 70.5 | 74.2 |
| eFG% | 49.1 | 47 | 50 | 51.9 |
| TO% | 16.9 | 20 | 20.2 | 20.2 |
| OREB% | 31.4 | 35 | 35.2 | 33.7 |
| FTA/FGA | 33.8 | 36.5 | 38.9 | 37.7 |
The Big Ten is less dramatic but similar:
| Big Ten | 2015 | 2010 | 2005 | 2002 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Offensive efficiency | 104 | 102.8 | 103.2 | 102.4 |
| Possessions per game | 62.3 | 62.3 | 62.8 | 65.1 |
| eFG% | 49.3 | 49.5 | 50.6 | 50.9 |
| TO% | 17.3 | 18.9 | 20.6 | 21.3 |
| OREB% | 30.2 | 30.8 | 32.3 | 32 |
| FTA/FGA | 33.4 | 33 | 34.4 | 37 |
The Big Ten has shown some degradation of shooting as fewer fouls are called and effective field goal percentage slips, but the large decrease in turnovers has offset that.
The Big Twelve has undergone a dip in efficiency…
| Big Twelve | 2015 | 2010 | 2005 | 2002 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Offensive efficiency | 102.2 | 103.9 | 104.7 | 105.6 |
| Possessions per game | 64.7 | 69.1 | 65.4 | 70.2 |
| eFG% | 48 | 49.4 | 50.5 | 50.2 |
| TO% | 19 | 19.2 | 20.4 | 19.2 |
| OREB% | 33.7 | 32.6 | 33.9 | 34.9 |
| FTA/FGA | 39 | 39.5 | 36.8 | 33.5 |
…but again, we are talking about a league losing approximately one basket per game. Hardly a crisis. The Big Twelve still shows the overall slowdown and hints at the reduction in TOs and OREBs as well.
College basketball is fine when college basketball is being played
![ysaxehqeckld8uch2du2[1]](https://mgoblog.com/sites/mgoblog.com/files/images/There-Is-No-College-Basketball-Crisis_9BA6/ysaxehqeckld8uch2du21.jpg "ysaxehqeckld8uch2du2[1]")
There is no college basketball scoring crisis. There is a college basketball actually-playing-basketball crisis.
It is not particularly surprising that athletic directors will leap at any explanation they can get their hands on to explain ever-slower games and declining attendance, even if that entails flogging a measly 7% decline in the number of shots as the end of basketball. It's not surprising because the alternative is finding the true culprits: the athletic directors themselves.
The athletic directors are the ones signing the contracts that see every timeout, and there are a million timeouts, followed by a commercial. They're the ones who implemented the ridiculous review system that stops play for minutes at a time to not give someone a flagrant foul or arbitrarily decide to overturn or not overturn an out of bounds call that was already pretty arbitrary.
They are the ones responsible for this:
Overall, the last 60 seconds of the 52 [most recent 2014 NCAA tourney] games combined have taken five hours, 44 minutes, and 51 seconds to complete. (That's including the five bonus final minutes from overtime games.) 5:44:51 is 605 percent longer than realtime; the average final minute took 5:57 to finish, with a median of 5:29.
That is insane.
Maybe people were inclined to put up with that when the alternatives were watching Hee-Haw or silently playing chess in a room with one very loud ticking clock. Not so much these days.
The problem is with the product. Fix the product. You might make less money right now, but with a better product you will be better off in the long run. Here's how you fix the product:
- Coaches must sacrifice a digit to call a timeout. The timeout signal is now a head coach handing one of his freshly snipped fingers or toes to the referee. Until such time as the coach has too few fingers to manipulate the shears, he must snip the fingers off himself. Afterwards his wife or children must.
…what? "Too extreme," you say? "This is barbaric," you say? "I will not condone this sort of behavior in our society," you say?
Fine. Fine.
- Severely reduce the number of timeouts. Ideally this is one, like hockey. More realistically you need to cut them down to three. Timeouts benefit nobody except megalomaniac coaches. They drastically lessen the immediacy of frantic finishes. By allowing teams in the lead to avoid five-second calls, tie-ups, and turnovers after getting trapped they reduce the chances of a trailing team coming back.
- All remaining timeouts before the last five minutes take the place of media timeouts. The timeout-ten-seconds-of-play-timeout thing is an awful frustration in the middle of the game.
- Media timeouts are every five minutes, not four.
- If you want to shorten the shot clock to 30 seconds, okay I guess. I was previously opposed to this since it would lead to more ugly late clock shots from college basketball outfits without guys who are particularly good at isolation, but the stats over the 15 years suggest that basketball could withstand a slight dip in efficiency okay.
You'll give up some money initially, but increased competition for fewer spots will make up some of it—you're still the only live game in town these days—and increased ratings from being less positively insufferable to watch will support the rest. As a side benefit, people will be more inclined to watch your games when they consist largely of game instead of t-shirt cannon.
The game is the same. It is eerily the same. If there's a difference it's in the stuff in between the game.
I'd love the Rock-n-Jock 50-point shot.
No, that's moving into gimmickry. The 3-pointer changed the game enough by reducing congestion in the paint. A 4-pointer would not do that. Outside shooting is already extremely valuable.
Analysis like this is where Brian's 2 engineering degrees shine through. Facts and figures make better arguments than nostalgia. I loved the finger-shears when he brought it up on twitter and I'm still in favor.
That said, even though everything that Brian posits would be great... no way in hell will the ADs do this. Zero-point-zero chance. Maryland and Rutgers are in the B1G. No way they give up any money in the short term.
agree with me. If you want to say there's a pace crisis instead of a skill crisis, that's fine, but that is a massive decline in the number of possessions from an already slow 2002. 2002 wasn't the golden era of CBB; the late 1980s-early 1990s was, when scoring and pace were substantially higher then they were in 2002. And subjectively, go to youtube and watch some of UNLV or Duke's games from the early 1990s. They look NOTHING like the sludgefest of today.
Basketball is supposed to be a highly athletic game of insanely quick decision making. It's not supposed to be Wisconsin/UVA running dull-as-dishwater swing offenses until 34 seconds run off the shot clock, then selling out to prevent the most exciting play in sports (the fast break) and packing the lane with unathletic defenders to try to draw flop-charges.
Here's three easy fixes and one hard one;
1) Get rid of 98% of charge calls.
2) Cut the shot clock down to 24 seconds.
3) Severely penalize fouls that hinder fast breaks.
4) Eliminate the cap on compensation and try to pay the superstars to play more than one or two seasons.
Thanks but no thanks. I've watched the NBA, and it sucks. Your proposal would just bring that same nonsense into the college game. Team play & strong defense are why I like the college game. Take that away, like you're suggesting, and there's just no reason to tune in.
Being more like the NBA is a feature, not a bug.
But I'd settle for being more like college basketball was in 1991. Watch this #1 UNLV @ #2 Arkansas game from 1991.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0G3lnFTrUQ
112-105 in regulation, with more dunks, layups, and blocks (and, you know; entertainment) than UVA or Wisconsin probably had all year this year.
Team play (Pop's ball movement sets oriented around multiple pick and rolls that have taken root in Atlanta, Portland, Golden State and elsewhere) and strong defense (Thib's help side shading and the Heat's insanely aggressive pick hedging) are basically the two trends that have defined the NBA over the past five years.
and I am not even talking about block/charge stuff (though you are wrong, an offensive player should not be allowed to run over a defender to get to the basket).
and I love how the team played in 2013. Especially against Louisville; instead of trying to "shorten the game" and play unentertaining sludgeball, he ran with a running team and produced a highly entertaining 82-76 classic that might have gone the other way if Trey Burke's block of Peyton Siva had been officiated correctly.
But I don't like his defense's reliance on flop-charges. I don't entirely agree that basketball has become "more of a thinking man's game" than it was in the 1980s. There is an advanced-stat case for many teams to play fast, risk a few more TOs, and trade defensive "packing" for attempted TOs. But the coaches today chose to prefer a different set of risks, and the officiating enables them to do so.
beilein is a coach who prefers a taking a good shot over a high pace ... it is no different than what wisco is doing this year.
2013 is a bad example because the team had 5 nba players on it. They are going to find good shots faster because they were far far more skilled than even a normal "good" p5 team. And even with that team, our pace was very slow that year just as it always is.
That's not my ideal, but it's not the NIU/UVA/Wisconsin sludgeball garbage that's pushing the game to new aesthetic lows. If we changed the rules a little bit to make one of his less entertaining defensive strategies unpalatable (and the entire defensive strategy UVA, Wisconsin, NIU, Denver use), we'd be faster and more entertaining.
What does "both ways" mean? Beilein's style is not my preferred one, I've already said that. But he's Michigan's coach, and when he did have elite talent he did at times push the pedal. If he weren't Michigan's coach I would root against him the way I root viscerally against Bo Ryan, Tony Bennett, Ben Jacobson, etc.
I have to admit that I'm relying only on the eyeball test and memory, but college basketball when I first started watching (late '80s) sure seemed more free-flowing than it is now. I just came up short in an attempt to find efficiency numbers that go back that far, but my memory is way off if they weren't higher in the late '80s-early '90s. And my memory is way off too if the game wasn't a lot more pleasing to watch - and by pleasing I mean less like wrastlin'.
Has Wisconsin traditionally been efficient offensively? I thought they were just ordinary in that regard until recently.
4th in 2014.
Those are Kenpom's recent rankings for Wisconsin's offensive efficiency. They are usually both 1) extremely efficient, and 2) extremely dull.
Most CBB viewers do NOT agree with you.
If that were true, people would be running to the hills and ignoring teams like UVA completely.
Instead UVA, during the last week of the regular season had two of the top ten most-watched sports programs of the week. Not college basketball programs, sports programs.
There seems to be this very misguided idea that what UVA and Wisconsin etc. do is bad for basketball. Not a shred of evidence to support it.
Louisville and Syracuse, actually, but you do have a point. Games between big-time teams are going to draw audiences, yes? Regardless of style. Anywa, I didn't say UVA was the reason they watched, I suggested that people didn't exactly turn it off.
And I don't see where "most people" are saying this. I see a few sportswriters. I also see lots of writers and announcers saying it's bull puckey. Either way, it's just media blather.
Wisconsin type offense, as long as there is a point to it and it is well executed. If a team is just passing the ball around to use up clock and then throw up a jump shot, not so much.
And the people who have been watching their games who aren't UVA fans have been complaining about how unentertaining they are to watch, so much so that UVA's President walked around the arena with a "Virginia isn't Boring" sign.
The problem with your position is that UVA isn't the Yankees, or Kentucky. People don't inherently have an bias against UVA (except a Rolling Stone editor, I guess?) that they shoehorn arguments/agenda into. They are watching your games and feeling bored/unentertained.
...a counterpoint is that the free-flowing Michigan-Louisville final of 2013 drew the second highest ratings of any final since 2005 (only Duke-Butler in 2010 drew a bigger audience).
Ultimately, though, ratings are such an imperfect measurement that they're nearly meaningless for this issue.* I think an appeal to common sense here is more approriate: What do American sports fans like more - fast-moving, high scoring games or slow-moving, low scoring games? The NFL obviously believes its the former given its rule changes over the last several years. And baseball obviously believes that too given its tinkering with a timer for at-bats and its turning of a blind eye when steroids were pumping up home run numbers.
*That is unless you're arguing there is a crisis. I'm not arguing there is a crisis. I'm only arguing that people like free-flowing basketball more than the Greco-Roman wrestling that we see in the Big Ten at times.
I'm not sure it's a great counterpoint. People don't know the game is going to be free-flowing beforehand unless they know the teams are, and Michigan doesn't have that reputation.
...scored 71, 78, 87, 79, and 61 points in that tournament (the 61 coming against Syracuse's zone). The sort of person who knows about teams' reputations probably knew how Michigan played.
But, as I said, ratings are nearly meaningless. People like NCAA basketball - there's no doubt about that. I'm not arguing that a UVA-Wisconsin final would kill the sport (though I wouldn't watch). But whether people like free-flowing basketball more than grindy, slow-down basketball is another story. And it defies common sense to argue that they prefer the latter. Americans like speed and points.
Sounds like you might be interested in the NBA.
I'd like to see the NCAA improve it's product, if not to match the NBA's level, at least to get where it was in the early 1990s.
Homogenizing the games is the opposite of a good idea. When I want to watch up-and-down basketball with occasional attention given to defense, I'll watch the pro game. When I want to watch what college offers, I'll watch the college game.
product in modern college basketball. That's not beneficial for college basketball or for the entertainment market.
"Quality" is highly subjective. Scoring and pace are not automatically the same as quality. Quality could just as easily mean more cohesive systems, better defense, and more parity.
winning the lottery and getting punched in the nose is "subjective." Yeah, there are people out there who'd choose the latter; they're the distinct minority and usually a little scrambled in the noggin ( sort of like the eight people who prefer Virginia's torpid sludgeball to, say, the Miami-OKC 2012 Finals).
You don't talk to enough people. There are tons of fans - and not just UVA and Wisconsin fans, sorry - that prefer the college game. You're coming from an incredibly biased viewpoint that can't see any more than one way of doing things.
I'm never going to prove that to you, and you're never going to prove that to me, but I can promise you this: yours is by far the more closed-minded viewpoint.
1. I think the block/charge call should be much more in favor of the offense, because sliding under a player is dangerous and doesn't encourage athletic plays. They were going down the right approach in 2013 but scrapped it when they sucked and were inconsistent with how they called it.
On the contrary, however, they should call more player control fouls. A defensive player has just as right to a spot as an offensive player. If an offensive player is going to dip his head and bull his way into the lane, the defensive player that is there shouldn't be penalized because a guy ran into him. That means you take away talking about "feet set" and "shoulders perfectly square" and things of that nature. If guys are playing tight and a defender has a spot, then he has the spot.
2. A shot clock of 24 seconds would be awful for college basketball. If you like and want to watch the NBA, that's fine and I have no issue with it. I prefer college basketball because I like the variety of offenses and I like to watch how the offenses run. But the biggest factor between the two is talent. The gulf in talent between the NBA and college ball is huge. There are 300+ teams in college basketball with kids that only play 4 years each. In pro basketball there are 30 teams and the good NBA players (their full time job) play around 10 years. The talent gap is huge. That means, even with teams that put an emphasis on team ball like the Spurs, that the talent level is at a high enough level that they can resort to a iso or two-man game and still get off good looks consistently after the initial set. That is absolutely not the case in college basketball. 30 seconds is the lowest it should go in college basketball, and I'd even worry then.
3. I have no problem with 3.
4. That's a can of worms that I don't think works.
Etc. Too many people are trying to make the college game into the pro game as if it's 1:1. It's like when people try to compare softball and baseball or women's sports to men's sports. They shouldn't be compared that tightly because they are so drastically different. Similar to college and pro football, some like that they are different. Improving the college game doesn't mean making it more like something that requires it's players to be better. The players won't get any better. Some talk below talks about "effort" and "coaching", and while I certainly disagree about the effort, the coaching won't change. You can't just magically make that better through rules change.
Anyway, I agree with Brian about 3 TOs (no TO needs to be used in the 1st half) and the media TO ever 5 minutes, even if they make the TO longer. The review process needs to be more efficient as well. I think there can be some slight in-game modifications to rules to support more flow, but I don't think you want to change the overall nature of the college game because I don't think it will benefit the college game.
I think an underrated element to this issue is the escalating salaries coaches and ADs have received, which leads to the "justification" behavior you see in meetings. There, you have men and women feeling they need to justify their $400k/year salary, so they just say "something" and try to do anything to make them look unique and worth the money they are getting. With coaches and ADs, its suggesting new rules, negotiating new rights's deals, calling a billion TOs and trying to milk possessions for all they are worth.
Obviously, you aren't going to change Tom Crean's inherit gooberness or Dave Brandon's bloodthirst for "branding synergy", so just take away those tools. As Brian suggested, cut down the number of media TOs and also take away TOs from coaches. Maybe do something as radical as not allowing a team to call a TO on an inbounds with under 2 minutes left. Anything to force basketball players to play basketball and not let guys in sweaty, ill-fitting suits on the sidelines dictate how the game should be played.
Brian this is a fantastic piece and I agree completely with the timeout proposition, especially the media timeout bullet point. The only other thing I would add is to clean up the contact off the ball (chucking cutters) and you would have more scoring. I think the game as it is now is fine outside of the number of stoppages in the game due to media timeouts, coaches timeouts, and reviews.
The problem is all the damn free throws at the end of the games. A comeback strategy of fouling the other team and hoping they miss the one-and-one isn't exactly the most tantalizing example of excellence in team defense. One simple rule change. If a team is in the bonus and they are fouled, they have the option of shooting the freethrows or taking the ball out of bounds with a new shot clock. This would get rid of the incentive for the team behind to foul late as a clock management strategy, would force teams to play defense instead, and most importantly, would keep the clock running at the end of games.
So, I guess you didn't like the end of the 2013 Kansas game? Trey's shot doesn't happen if we don't force Elijah Johnson to shoot a one-and-one.
And the game at Northwestern this year, while it sucked for us, was incredibly dramatic for a neutral observer. Irvin's missed one-and-one gave NW a final chance and they drained it.
If you eliminate late-game free throws, you destroy a ton of drama. The final minute of games will still contain lots of fouls (teams are going to do everything possible to get the ball) but there will be far fewer changes of possession. I don't like that idea.
'megalomaniacal coaches.' exactly.
this week, at least three coaches will call timeouts before the 16 minute tv timeout after a couple of quick turnovers, or after having given up three three-pointers. book it.
With coaches only able to call timeouts on dead balls the flow of the game would be much better. Plus the last 2 minutes of the game won't take an actual 15 minutes or real time.
Hahahahahahahahaha! If only it were so easy.
you might make less money right now, but with a better product you will be better off in the long run.
I can't tell you how many times I've been watching a random college basketball game and turned it and watched something else. Mostly because they were reviewing something for what seemed like 20 minutes. I believe all those changes would make it more enjoyable to attend a game and watch it from home.
The biggest problems I see are:
1) Too many ticky tack fouls called
2) A team takes a timeout to stop a run, so we go to commercial. We get back from commercial, play 10 seconds and a foul gets called. TV Timeout. Kills the flow of the game.
3) Still no block/charge consistency as we saw in the Michigan Wisconsin game
4) Reviews that take 5 minutes also kill the flow of the game
I actually would go the other way on point one. Not enough small fouls are called. If they called all the grabbing and bumping (especially off the ball) the game would flow more freely and there would be more of an emphasis on skill, whcih I think would make it a more pleasing product to watch.
Because I'm of the belief that a defender has every right to a spot as an offensive player. The issue is the grabbing and hand checking. It should be like NFL football after 5 yards. A defensive player theoretically has the right to the space, but can't use his hands or it's a hold or illegal contact.
Cut down on hand checks and grabbing (not necessarily bumping) and then things will flow while not being unfair to the defense.
I laughed REAL hard about the coaches clipping thier fingers off. Gotta love the writing here. Well done.
I do not think that word means what you think it means, Seth Davis.
This is a great column.
/Virginia fan
because that is the first year of full data (kenpom), without relevant data, you just rely on the nostalgia of yesteryear which allows people to remember only the fun games, not the ugly brick-fests
Comments